US Election 2020: Facebook bans 'Stop the Steal' group created by Trump supporters

Calling it “exceptional measures” to prevent the spread of misinformation amid the US Election 2020, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has banned a large group named “Stop the Steal” that is created by the supporters of US President Donald Trump in a bid to organise demonstrations against the vote count. In the same group, some of the members even suggested violent approaches to deal with the situation of Democratic Challenger Joe Biden leading in some states while others accused the rivals of “stealing” the elections from Republicans. 

However, the group had included over 350,000 members before the social network took it down. While the vote counting for presidential election stretched for several days, “Stop the Steal” was one of the several smaller groups that were created on Facebook by Trump supporters who tried to ensure that they would get around the moderators of the social media and “trolls” who might report or block them. Facebook, in a statement, acknowledged the group and said that it attempted to “delegitimise” the election process.

“In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group ‘Stop the Steal,’ which was creating real-world events,” Facebook said in a statement. “The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”

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Facebook to continue battling misinformation

Facebook has also said that it will continue its measures to tackle the misinformation and watch the activity that violates the rules and policies. It also vowed to take action against the same. After the social network removed the original group, another copycat “Stop the Steal” was growing steadily as of November 5 (local time) and had nearly 13,000 members. Other such groups were also easily searchable on the website. 

In these groups, achieving the similar statements said by Trump of US Election 2020 being a “fraud” were circulated, without proof. Even though reportedly the calls for violence were not immediately apparent, a screenshot was shared by  Center for Countering Digital Hate that showed a post from the now-banned group saying, “Neither side is going to concede. Time to clean the guns, time to hit the streets.”

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